Day of Wrath and Dreyer

I recently watched Day of Wrath (1943), a harrowing tale of forbidden love set in 17th century Denmark and directed by the famous Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. A priest has fallen in love with a much younger woman and marries her (it is implied that he forces her to marry him in exchange of saving her mother being burned as a witch). When the priests younger son appears, the young wife and he immediately falls in love and starts a secretive relationship.

Dreyer uses long takes and spare dialogue to create a lamenting, melancholy feel along with sparse use of light, creating a heavy clouded darkness. The movie is constructed in two parts: the first introduces an old woman being accused of witchcraft. She seeks refuge with the young wife, who hesitantly agrees to hide her. When the persecutors come knocking at the door, the young wife does nothing to prevent them from finding her. The burning of the witch is very traumatic for the young wife and she is further distanced from her old husband, who is one of the priests most active in condemning the witch. The priest's son can't bear watching, and appears to dislike the whole process. The second part is occupied with the romance of the young wife and the son. But when she confess to the son wanting the priest dead and he ends up dying shortly after, he starts thinking she too is a witch, just like her mother. Dreyer does imply that she might be a witch, and that witches maybe do exist.

Earlier when the priests are interrogating the old witch, torturing her to confession, she makes a threat to the leading contortionist. Later he dies, telling the old priest on his deathbed he is convinced the witch is responsible. Dreyer took this a step further in his next film, The Word, over ten years later, where he makes the viewer believe in miracles and God. In this movie he could be perceived as violently critiquing Christians, or sympathizing with them. In "Jeanne D'Arc" made in 1926, Dreyer is quite clearly condemning the priests and believers, portraying D'Arc like an icon, a Madonna, a martyr. In "Day of Wrath" the witch dying is portrayed as pitiful perhaps, but not glorified. Dreyer further imposes the notion of evil vs. pure by having an angelic boys choir singing at the witch burning. When the son dismisses the young wife at the end, even supporting his mother's claim of her being a witch, this could be seen as him trying to repent for his own sins by betraying his love. He chooses God and his father. The young wife "confesses" of being a witch, giving the viewer a sense of her wanting to die when being betrayed by her loved one.

Overall, I will say that Dreyer clearly sympathizes with the young wife, but in a subtle way. It would be too easy to paint a broad picture of evil religious clergies. Instead Dreyer wants to explore the doubts they had and portray them as humans able to make mistakes.

The ideal movie

Defining one's own taste in movies is a hard task. Also in doing so, one is risking being perceived as close-minded. I must admit I don't have one ideal movie, some rigid sets of preconceived rules which a movie must adhere to. I am pretty fond of variation and watch a lot of different movies. But, if I am completely honest with myself there are some hidden ideals that are of a general nature.

I am very fond of brave statements and movies that challenge our outlook on life and art. Pier Paolo Pasolini is one director I admire very much for this quality. Movies that deal with moral questions, spiritual questions that are draped with mystique and carefully considered symbols and images are what I consider important. Basically, the movies that mean the most to me are not genre-excercises, but unique movies that often avoid straightforward narratives. Genre-movies could also be interesting, especially if they redefine or break with genre-conventions, but they are rarely considered favorites. I'm not much of a formalist, though I can , and often do, love a movie based on cinematography, or great bravura shots. It's often what the movies stands for politically and philosophical and how it gets this across to the viewer, that is most important to me. I like original statements, and also hold the director in high regards, in typical auteurist fashion.

I could mention some important directors: Ingmar Bergman, Carl Theodor
Dreyer, Alfred Hitchcock, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Federico Fellini, Andrej Tarkovskij, Louis Malle, Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Michael Haneke, Roman Polanski, Jean Pierre Melville. As you can see, I am both fan of dramas, art movies, horror, surrealism, stylized crime movies, science fiction and thrillers. I seldom rate comedies highly (which I admit is a bit stupid when I think about it) and I am not a very big fan of realism. I think movies should transcend real life, and think that real art lies in the manipulation of reality.



I have a great deal of respect for the medium. The movies I dislike, are movies that merely exploit the medium, being made purely for financial reasons without trying to be original. Movies that tries to exploit a trend (the recent superhero movies, capitalistic shopping movies and romantic comedies spring to mind). I am not a film scholar, though I have attended a university course in Film History. I probably won't get into technical details much in my writings, but more general musings around movies, directors or genres.